New IQAS standards 2019

03-May-2019

Improving Quality in Allergy Services (IQAS) has launched an updated standards for allergy services for both general and specialised allergy services. The standards have been released alongside a set of clinical quality and workforce metrics census.

The RCP consulted with services and stakeholders in 2018 with regards the new IQAS standards. For further details and to review the standards please click here https://www.iqas.org.uk/CMS/AllNews.aspx.

Existing services will have until 1 October 2019 submit their self-assessment and provide a date for their assessment visit, in order to be assessed on the previous standards. However, they may choose to be assessed on the new standards instead. Any service who does not book an assessment by this time, will be assessed against the new standards only.

What can you expect from the new standards?

• One set of requirements for all services (no differentiation between level A and level B)
• Removal of requirements which stipulate how many nurses, doctors and workforce needed to run the service and how many patients should be seen
• Adoption of Clinical Quality and Workforce Metrics, as a census, to be captured by services annually. Please click here for full details. Services will be expected to collect this data from April 2019, with the first upload of the data taking place in March 2020. More details about how this process will work be shared with services in the coming months.
• Added requirements for demonstrating shared decision-making principles with patients and signposting to local/national support groups
• Added requirements for the development of an annual plan (covering improvement and innovation initiatives, training and key performance indicators) and more emphasis on staff and stakeholder communications.
• Removed requirement for various databases.

If you have any questions, on the above please contact the RCP IQAS team directly.